The Little World

Do you remember seeing a 1960’s George Peppard movie called ” The Carpetbaggers ” ? A rough sketch of Howard Hughes and quite racy at the time. It’s title was taken from the scornful name given to Northern exploiters who flooded into the American South after the Civil War. Conmen, graspers, and get-rich-quick merchants…rather in the mould of Hungry Tyson. They were not all scoundrels but there has rarely been a good word said about them – particularly by the people of the South.

Well, I think I spotted their equivalent here in Australia at the recent Victorian scale model exhibition held at Sandown park. I like to call them the Suitcasers.

Predominantly, though not exclusively, Asian people, they seemed to have brought samples of goods to sell at the exhibition that had only marginal utility but that were packaged for the attraction of the eye. Plastic tools, odd materials and abrasives, aluminium bits and pieces – they suggested items that could be crammed into suitcases and flown down from Junk-in Province for a quick sale and fast escape.

Even the larger gear – the small air compressors and airbrush sets – seemed to have the fairground, rather than the workshop, about them. I looked but did not touch, and cannot say that anything they had on show was tempting. A lot of it was recognisable from similar products in our local hobby shop, but there were vastly different names and great deal of Chinese language on the packets.

Don’t get me wrong – I use Ustar goods from Taiwan here in the Little Workshop and welcome them as well-built and good value for money. But I get them from a shop that is here all year long.

Carpetbagging? Probably not – and if the goods on offer are cheap enough you are risking very little money. The real danger is that you might be risking the form and finish on a model that has taken a long while to build. It’s still never a mistake to buy quality tools and to use them carefully.